1917 bird illustrations

I love to support local libraries, so I always try to attend Friends of the Library  sales. At the Fall sale this week, I found some treasures, including wonderful vintage books from a set called The Nature Library.  My favorite is the volume on birds, with beautiful illustrations by R. E. Todhunter.  Here are a few of the illustrations for you.  (As always, personal use only, not for sale individually or in collections.)

Hummingbirds

Bluejay

Mockingbird

Barn owl

Click twice on the images to download the largest size. 
If you like these, let me know and I'll post some more soon!

Lovely ladies

Women's fashions from the early part of the last century were so enchanting.  Although I would not enjoy wearing corsets and heavy petticoats -- especially in hot weather -- the romantic dresses, hats, jewelry and hairstyles are very appealing.  After looking at these images, I'm thinking about wearing more feminine clothing and ditching the jeans-and-t-shirt look. (I usually LIVE in slacks, but I actually bought a skirt last week!)

Today's "Life Made Lovely Monday" downloads are vintage images of lovely ladies in their finery. Enjoy!

 Beauty from a 1913 Valentine postcard

"Miss Vanity" from an undated Austrian postcard

Beatrice

The Beatrice image is from a German postcard made from a painting by Angelo Asti, a French artist who lived from 1847 to 1903.

Ruby

The Ruby image is from an undated German postcard. I haven't been able to find information about the artist, M. Marco.  I'll update this post if I find out more about the painter.

Hope you like these as much as I do!

Using paper scraps

Sometimes I find it hard to throw things away... that's one reason I have so much ephemera to share!  But bits and pieces of scrapbook paper and ephemera can really pile up if you save them all, so I love projects that allow me to use those bits and pieces.  Here are a few ideas for you if you, too, are a scrap saver.

Birthday card made with leftover strips of scrapbook paper

I have a Genesis Paper Trimmer, which makes perfect straight cuts, so I end up with many long straight strips of paper after making greeting cards and other projects. These thin, perfectly even strips are perfect for birthday candles, so this was a quick, simple card to make with my scraps.

Old notebook covered with paper tape and decorative scraps

Before: Beat-up notebooks before "renovations"

I bought these dog-eared Neatbooks at a flea market for a quarter each.  The covers were bent and frayed, but the inside pages were in like-new condition, which made these books perfect candidates for new covers!  I use these in my purse and in my car for jotting down notes, ideas and "to do" lists.

Watch for more ideas for using scraps in a future post.

Vintage women's fashion

Vintage magazine ads and vintage sewing patterns are great sources of information about fashion over the years.  These images from the 1940s suggest that women wore hats and white gloves, dresses featured decorative trim and often had pockets, heels were high, and the ideal waist was tiny.  These tiny waists are interesting because movie stars in that day had more ample figures, with a few exceptions such as Vivien Leigh. Was this the start of a shift towards today's unhealthy ideal of an ultra thin female body?

Women's fashions from the 1940s

1940s fashions

Vintage gameboard graphics

Games are always fun as themes for collage and assemblage projects and greeting cards.  Today's images are vintage game boards from a collection called 52 Variety Game Chest, which featured a game for every week in the year.


Click on the image twice to see the largest image file.

Put n' Take gameboard

Alphabetics game board

Fisherman's Catch game board

Enjoy!

Vintage Bingo cards and 10-cent tickets

Game-related items are always fun to use. They're great for handmade greeting cards, scrapbook pages, altered books, assemblage art and collage projects. Here are a few vintage Bingo cards and tickets for you to download and use in your artwork.

Let the games begin!

1927 ad: Grandmother is still dancing!

A 1927 issue of Pictorial Review featured this lovely illustration by Corinne Dillon in a full-page ad for... I'm going to give you a minute to guess.


I love the ladies' bobbed hairdos and Flapper dresses -- wonderful examples of 1920s fashions.

The ad title is "Grandmother is still dancing," and the ad copy begins like this:


Grandmother is no longer a bored spectator at the dance. No more does she decorate the side walls, wishing the party would end. No, indeed! 


At the first note of the music she is right out on the floor. There she stays throughout the evening, doing the very latest steps. And she's just as reluctant as anyone else to hear the music of the last dance fading away.


Of course, there's a secret about her enduring vitality -- a simple secret she's perfectly willing to pass along.


Blog readers, can you guess the secret?


Her secret, it turns out, is Feen-a-Mint, the chewing laxative.  And you thought something like arthritis medicine might be the secret to an evening of dancing!


Corinne Boyd Dillon, a Kentucky-born artist was a very busy illustrator in those days. Her artwork was in most of the national magazines of the day, as well as many children's books and novels. I wonder how she felt about creating this beautiful art for a laxative advertisement... I guess it helped pay the bills!


Feen-a-Mint, incidentally, resembled Chiclets and its box warns that it is "A medicine, not a confection."


Keep dancing!